Not A Quirk, Can't Prove It
by ttyphlosion
Summary: Midoriya becomes an illegal Spider-Man and Todoroki keeps showing up and getting into fights with everyone. D5: Promises! "Life is bristling with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to cultivate one's own garden." – Voltaire, letter to Pierre – Joseph Luneau de Boisjermain(21 October 1769) (STORY IS READABLE NOW!)


Izuku stops on his evening run to pet a cat in an alley, and that's where it begins.

He's just crouched there in his running clothes, grinning at the cat's thunderous purrs and minding his own business, when an entire glowing blue spider bites him on the inside of his left wrist. He startles sharply, falling back on his ass with a yelp. The cat jumps and books it like he just turned into a cucumber in front of it. Also, holy shit, what business does a spider have _glowing?_

It's a big spider. It has very long legs. It runs away very fast, and Izuku has to take a good five minutes to calm down. Then he sees the swell on his wrist, and feels sick. _Oh my god, a glowing spider bit me, I'm going to die. I'm sorry, Mom, I'm sorry, All Might. I was bested by a nightclub arachnid._

He walks the rest of the way home feeling woozy, and he can't tell if it's just him overreacting or if he's already on his way to an early grave.

When he gets home, he chokes out a half-hearted "I'm home," and waves off his mom's concerns on his way to his room, claiming that he's tired and feels a little sick. A lot sick is more like it.

He passes out on his bedroom floor.

The next morning, Izuku feels light, but in weirdly good way. He slams his head into the corner of his desk to check if he's a ghost. He's not, and his forehead hurts very much. He goes to school silently questioning it the whole way, and also the skip in his step that getting bit by a spider definitely did not warrant. What kind of spider gave its victims an energy boost? Or is this just a high before crashing and dying for good? God, he doesn't want to know.

Some kids that aren't Bakugou try and forcibly wheedle money out of him because they're irresponsible gangsters who lose their lunch money when they don't know how to make one for themselves. When one of them goes to shove him against a locker and presumably raid his bag, he does something new, because the lightness, the energy compels him to and he feels like he can. He leans with the shove and takes two steps up the lockers and pushes off it to redirect the force right back into the guy. He falls backwards and hits the ground with a satisfying thud. Izuku momentarily panics, he could have hurt him, but then he's getting up and his lackeys are screeching _What the fuck_ and the guy's baring his teeth at him. He looks about ready to lunge, so Izuku turns and runs to his classroom.

Wild.

He doesn't tell All Might about this after school. He actually kind of forgets to, because he can lift a significant amount more than yesterday and that gets him ecstatic, focusing on hauling things he couldn't with a tunnel vision.

Two days later, on his evening run, again, he finds out about his ability to crawl on walls and the little slits on his wrists he hadn't noticed that shoot out spiderwebs. He does this in the process of saving a woman from becoming an unwilling organ donor between two dumpsters. The dude with the knife is messily plastered against the face of one of them, knife at his feet. Izuku helps up the obviously strongly drugged woman and walks with her to the nearest police station. He's, like, ninety-eight percent sure that what he just did was vigilantism and also illegal, so he sits her down on one of the benches outside and hopes for the best.

Before he can completely pry her off him to make his leave, the woman slurs, "'Hank yOU, spoider man. You… saved my knife."

He pats her shoulder, very uncomfortable, and goes home.

He should really change his route one of these days. The winding alleys were dangerous, especially for a junior high student like himself.

But then again… who would save the others from danger?

Maybe if he kept doing this, he'd need a vigilante name. Spider-Man wasn't the worst. It wouldn't be as important as his hero name, if he got that far, and he was actively shrinking that possibility with the vigilantism. But he couldn't register his spidey-powers, which he was somehow sure weren't a quirk, in addition to One For All. Super Strength and Spider? There was no way he could make those seem like it was one quirk used different ways. All it had for it was alliteration.

So Spider for his vigilante self, and One For All for his future hero-in-training self.

Izuku's on a roof. He's been doing that a lot lately, in addition to practicing what he thinks is parkour as he runs across roofs and catching himself with webs whenever he fell. He's still hesitant to trust their stability, even after his tests dropping and catching himself off monkey bars in the dead of night in the neighborhood park. He's still working on keeping his arms bent when he shoots, because dear god, wrenching his arms nearly out of his sockets hurt, and he'd hate to find out what it feels like when something actually pops out of place.

He's donning his freshly completed homemade vigilante costume, too. He's pretty proud of it; it's a red short-sleeved zipup hoodie over light blue pair of footies, along with big black hiking boots he found in the back of his closet, and old fingerless biking gloves and swim goggles from Mom's. Under the goggles he has the neck-length red ski mask with little holes for breathing instead of one big one, which he got from a hero cosplay shop. Bless Wingman and their merch, whoever they are. He'd also spent a good couple days hunched in his room embroidering a large spider in the middle of his hoodie with black thread, and it turned out pretty well considering how many times he pricked his fingers.

But yeah, he's on a roof, and he can see a teenager in the park being bullied. The only, only reason he hasn't intervened himself is that one of the older bullies has comically large muscles– no, not really. There's another kid marching over from the sidewalk to intervene, looking maybe closer to Izuku's age but a lot prettier and a lot angrier and rocking a candy cane of a bedhead. When he comes within throwing distance of the scene, the bullies look up and step back from the assumed arrival of his presence alone. The burly one steps forward and sneers at him, then kicks dirt towards his victim on the ground. Candy cane speeds up, and Izuku settles himself on the edge of the roof proudly, ready to watch a good show. He'll intervene if it gets too bad. Sucks that he's out of hearing range.

Candy Cane is very clearly not afraid of the big one, because wow, he does not slow down as he gets closer. He keeps walking until he looks ready to walk right through him and stops abruptly right in front of him, his nose nearly touching the dude's chest and glaring up at him with a heat that Izuku can feel from a hundred meters away. One of his lackeys moves towards the guy on the ground of her own volition, and in a second, Candy Cane's standing between all of them and him. He's standing very still, and Izuku sees his mouth move. _Don't do that,_ his mind supplies as his eyes track his lips.

There's a thick pause, and Izuku slips off the wall. He shoots his silk at a lamppost hanging over the street between him and the park, and his momentum pulls him across the lanes very fast. He lands near a bush and a bench, only stumbling forward a little, and there he is, just in hearing range.

"Don't do that," Candy Cane repeats clearly, like Izuku had clicked on the next episode of real life on his trip down and this was the _Previously on… _

Now that he was closer, he could see Candy Cane better. In addition to the iconic red-and-white hair, he has a splotch of red over his eye that could be part of his quirk, a birthmark, or a scar. His eyes are two different colors, like his hair: the one on his right is brown, and the one on his left blue. He's… actually really pretty. If Izuku disregards the fact that he's snarling in the face of a high schooler a lot bigger than him right now.

"Who the fuck are you." The Big Bully says. He sounds like an extra gruff Bakugou, and Izuku's a little disappointed, having had been hoping for him to have a higher voice for comedic purposes.

"Don't do that."

"What do you think you're doing?" _Uh, telling you not to do that, maybe? _Izuku thinks. The Big Bully then lifts one of his fists into the air, and sticks his middle and ring finger down at Candy Cane, leaving the others in a curled position. _His quirk?_

Candy Cane restates his catchphrase, and Izuku considers renaming him Echo, either from Greek mythology or self-explanatory whichever way you choose to look at it. He glances up at the hand, but doesn't give it too much of his attention.

It turns out that the hand thing was a signal, because a large ragged-looking middle-aged woman with studs and scar tissue littering her face soon walks forward out of the trees on the far side of the playground and claps the big bully merrily on the shoulder. They both grin at Candy Cane, and the bullies walk away while the… mother, maybe, stays behind.

She doesn't look like the heroic type, however much Izuku hates to judge people by their appearance. He hopes she doesn't start anything.

She lets him down.

Candy Cane is surprisingly competent in a fistfight with an adult much larger than him. Izuku's impressed. He couldn't pull off half the moves he does. Thankfully enough, the two brawlers wander away from the victim, who after all this time still sitting on the ground. Candy Cane might be leading the mom away from him, and if he is, Izuku commends his actions. Something in the fight must spur the guy on the ground into action, because he shakily pulls himself to his feet and steps towards the spat like he wants to repay Candy Cane's favour.

Izuku takes this as his cue to intervene. He shoots his string at the faraway slide of the playground to yank himself forward faster and stop the teenager in his tracks. He does this by tapping him on the shoulder, and when he startles and looks to him, shaking his head no.

"Go home, kid," he tells him, and immediately flushes under his red ski mask. He's a lot shorter than him and definitely younger than him, but the guy looks a little relieved to back down, though he glances back one last time. Then he scrutinizes Izuku's handmade suit warily.

"W-who are you?" He stutters, and Izuku lets himself smile. He's still watching the fight out of the corner of his eye.

"I'm Spider-Man!" He taps his chest. "You probably do want to get out of here, though, we don't know what that lady's quirk is. Look out for those bullies on your way, okay?"

"You're with the other guy?" He asks.

Izuku looks back at the fight. "God, I wish I was. See you later!"

The guy looks a little dazed as he walks off.

Izuku goes closer to them, and considers for a moment getting between them and breaking it up. While he's contemplating just how to do that, the woman lands a solid hit on Candy Cane's stomach and makes to bring down her hand on the back of his neck a lot harder than to just land him in the hospital for a few days. Izuku doesn't even think about it, he shoots a thick web at her hand and yanks as hard as he can.

She sails cleanly over Candy Cane's bent but miraculously not retching form and faceplants in the grass. She tries to get up but Izuku jumps onto her back to push her back to the ground. Even though he's still short, he likes to think his training with All Might has given him enough muscle mass to be heavy. She doesn't exactly stay down, but she's stunned long enough for Candy Cane to look up and see him. One of his arms is braced across his stomach, and he looks faintly green, but his effort is valiant.

"…Thanks?" Candy Cane greets him. Izuku smiles, not like he can see it, and plasters the woman's fists to the ground with multiple layers of webbing. She bucks, and he sticks her feet together for good measure. She looks like a writhing mermaid.

"So you're okay?" Izuku asks him.

He blinks and stands up straight. "Yeah."

There's an awkward silence where neither of them seem to know what to say, so they watch the mother flop. Izuku vaguely wonders why she isn't cussing them out right now, but tries to make conversation with Candy Cane. "So… you held your own pretty well with her."

"I've had practice," is all he says in response. There's another, shorter response.

"Did you use your quirk on her?" He asks. Her not speaking might be the result of something like that.

Candy Cane's eyes flash with something as he looks at him accusingly. "That's illegal."

"No, it isn't," Izuku says. "It would have been in self-defense. And I'd be your witness."

"And who might you be?"

"I'm Spider-Man!" He announces, with maybe a little too much glee. "With a hyphen. Who're you?"

"A civilian," Candy Cane says carefully. He examines him closely, probably in scrutiny of his fashion and name choices. "Are you supposed to be a hero?"

'Supposed to be' trips Izuku up. "Uh, no. Vigilante."

"_That's_ illegal."

"…I guess."

Two months later, Izuku sees Candy Cane again. He'd swooped to a vantage point to watch the scene play out when he heard the struggle from a couple roofs over. Candy's duking it out with a leopard mutant type wearing leggings under a skirt and a heavy metal shirt. Does that make them punk? Is that the right category? Izuku can't keep track.

Like the park with the buff woman, Candy Cane is holding his own, but he looks to be struggling with a slippery opponent like the leopard. That might be because his chest hurts, though. He keeps lifting his fist just so to keep if between the mutant and the right side of his torso.

After a certain point, though, more specifically one where the mutant brutally shoves him into the grimy wall face-first, he starts to just… get pummeled. Izuku takes too long in his opinion deciding whether or not 'Taking It' was a tactic, but the second he decides it isn't, he drops off the fire escape he's standing on. Shooting a string at a high point on the opposing wall in just the right place gets him swinging straight into the mutant type, feet first. He sticks them to the ground with a wide swath of webs and rushes to Candy Cane's side. He's leaning against the wall with his head hung low and Izuku needs to call an ambulance.

He swears profusely as he fishes through all of his pockets before finding the right one with his phone in it, and fumbles with the emergency call feature. There's a sudden chill in the air, and Izuku looks up to see Candy Cane building up a small spire of ice to lift his phone out of his hands. It's surprisingly gentle, but he's probably just tired. You know, because of how injured he is. Because Izuku hadn't intervened when he should have. "You need a hospital," he whispers, but doesn't snatch his phone back.

Candy Cane's mismatched eyes are alight with pain but alert enough to plead with him through his goggles. "No, I can… I take care of it." Izuku can hear how tentatively he's breathing.

"Do you have a broken rib?" Izuku demands.

"Ah… that's what that is." Candy winces. "Thanks for helping me again. I can get back to my house," he uses the wall and another ice spire to help himself stand up, "by myself."

"Like fucking hell you will." Midoriya stands up and swipes his phone off the first spire, stuffing it back into a pocket that he's bound to forget later, in one swift movement. "You're coming to my apartment. It's, like, a block away from here, and I have stuff to fix you up with."

"Wow, you have your own apartment?" Candy Cane sways and pinches the bridge of his nose. "How adulty of a vigilante like yourself."

"I don't know what you mean," Izuku muses, taking Candy Cane's left arm and slinging it over his shoulder. He knows most of his first aid from Google, but you're supposed to keep people talking if they're badly injured, right? God, he hopes Candy Cane doesn't die on him. His parents would be worried.

As Izuku leads Candy Cane to his apartment, carrying most of the conversation with senseless rambling, he leads a separate train of thought wondering what the hell he could've gotten up to _before_ he got in another fight with a villain to break his rib. Izuku's learned a lot more about fighting in his time being a night shift casual vigilante. He could tell when he started spectating that the two were just trading their starting blows, the neat ones that showed they hadn't quite picked up on each other's styles yet. Candy Cane already had the bad rib – to be fair, it might not have been all the way broken at that point – but the wall slam definitely finished the job, or at least made it worse.

There was also something else Izuku had picked up on watching the two fight, especially near the end when Candy Cane stopped fighting back.

He was frighteningly quiet when he took blows.

Izuku takes the elevator for the first time since beginning his training with All Might. Candy Cane must have gotten used to the pain on the walk, because his eyes are open and slightly clearer and showing blatant distaste for the elevator music. That was one thing Izuku hadn't missed. Candy was still being largely held up by his strength alone, and he complains to himself in his mind if he's even trying to carry his own weight anymore. Sure, Izuku was strong, but everyone gets heavy if you held them long enough.

He unlocks the apartment door and only realizes his grave mistake after calling out the automatic, "I'm home!"

"Welcome back!" is Mom's immediate response. Her voice comes from the kitchen, and thankfully, it doesn't come any closer. He mentally pleads to every god he knows not to let her say his name. "We're having leftovers for dinner tonight. I'll call you when it's ready!"

_Holy hell, my mother is a blessing,_ he thinks, sighing in relief. He opens his eyes to see Candy Cane looking him straight in the goggles with the most surprised–not–surprised expression he's seen on him.

"Shut up," he hisses halfheartedly, and toes off his shoes with difficulty, as they are hiking boots. Candy Cane follows his example. He pushes him all the way down their hall to the bathroom with urgency so he doesn't get a chance to see any of the photos on the walls or the nameplate on Izuku's bedroom door that says his name.

When Candy Cane gets set down on the toilet seat in the bathroom, he remarks, "That was rude."

"Yes. It was. I can't have you seeing anything in this house because I need to protect my secret identity. And for the record, I'm covering your eyes on the way out."

"…I'm literally in your house right now and you're still trying to protect your secret identity?"

"You literally have a broken rib right now," Izuku redirects in the smoothest way he ever has. "Besides, I don't know your name, either."

There's a pause as Izuku pulls his personal first-aid kit out of the cabinet. He looks over at Candy Cane. He looks dumbstruck. "You don't know who I am?"

"What, you're famous?"

Candy Cane doesn't say something for a second too long.

"Holy shit, you _are?_ How did you not tell me this?"

"…I've literally met you twice. I–" he scrunches his eyes for a moment, something apparently flaring up in pain. "I thought you already knew."

"Okay, stop building it up. Who are you?" Izuku motions for him to take off his shirt, which is a mistake for three different reasons. One, he actually listens to him, two, he's incredibly fit, and three, his torso is absolutely mottled with scars.

His stillness must say it all, because Candy Cane doesn't give his name. Izuku can feel the mood plummet. "I'll tell you as thanks for patching me up," he says to the floor after a while.

Izuku thinks that's fair. He doesn't ask any questions, as much as he yearns to. He swallows. "Okay."

"Todoroki Shouto." He says.

Izuku halts in putting the supplies away. "…Todoroki as in–?"

"-The number two hero, yeah." Todoroki confirms. His voice is grave and defeated, and Izuku doesn't like it, so he stops thinking and blurts out the most honest thing that comes to mind.

"He's still a hero?"

Todoroki gives him the most awestruck look.

He rambles, "I thought someone would have arrested him by now for all that property damage and general assholery."

It comes to him a second too late that he literally just told who might as well be his best friend that his dad should be in prison. A smoke bomb filled with shame and you-fucked-up and dread explodes in his stomach, but it dispels with the sound of a single bark of shocked laughter. Izuku looks up, and Todoroki has his hand slapped over his mouth. "God, I wish," he says right through it.

For all the bonding time the two shared in the bathroom, Izuku still covers Todoroki's eyes on the way to the entrance. He can stand on his own now, and Izuku somehow misses holding him up like he had.

Before Todoroki opens the door to let himself out, he hesitates. "Spider-Man," he says, "I think you're my best friend."

"Oh," Izuku says intelligently. "Oh." Tears begin to well up in his eyes. "I think…" he has to pause to lift his goggles off slightly so he doesn't start drowning his eyes. "I think you're my best friend too." It comes out like a warble.

Todoroki thanks him one last time before leaving. Izuku rushes back to his room to change out of his costume and maybe cry happy tears a little more in a place that isn't the front hall.

He does eventually tell All Might about his spider powers over froyo. Not the vigilante work he was doing with it, but, you know, the webs, the agility, and the crawling-on-walls-and-ceilings. All Might was sure to be disappointed if he learned about that, and for some fatherly reason, he didn't want to disappoint him.

All Might takes the news well. Outside of the worried, _Did you notice any negative effects when you got the quirk?_ he accepts it. The only weird things are that he keeps referring to it as a quirk, probably just by habit, though, and the intense thinking expression he wears when Izuku describes how he received it.

Yeah, that was another thing about the spider powers: they don't feel like a quirk. It makes no sense and is completely invalid because Izuku's never had a quirk in the first place to know what one feels like to compare it to, but…. he doesn't know. It just doesn't.

Izuku receives One For All the morning of the entrance exam, and breaks his entire arm extravagantly.

On the first day of school, he ties his tie incorrectly and nearly has a full-blown panic attack in the threshold of his new homeroom class. It's not because Bakugou's here or the guy who yelled at him twice in the entrance exam – those are terrible, don't get him wrong – but because Todoroki is here, Todoroki Shouto is here, the boy with the scars who hates his dad and keeps getting in fights with random villains in spontaneous instances of delinquency is here, his best friend is here.

And he can't even talk to him.

(He also breaks his finger to prove his worth.)

After the fucking disaster of a school field trip called the USJ, he gets healed by Recovery Girl and goes home. He's tired as all hell and the first thing he does once he reaches his bedroom is take a three-hour power nap on his bed. It's really a miracle he doesn't sleep longer, but when he wakes up it's no surprise that none of his fatigue has gone with the embrace of his half-dreams. Mom, always the best, will probably leave him undisturbed until tomorrow, assuming he's sleeping. But the lightness thrumming under his skin is urging him to go and do something with it, and it really hurts his brain to feel that and his overwhelming need to sleep at the same time.

He gets his vigilante suit on and jumps out his window.

He finds Todoroki again.

This time, he's being mugged for his wallet, and he doesn't even look like he cares. Sure, there's a chance that he has nothing of worth or special to him in there, but Izuku can't just sit by and do nothing.

Not after today.

What the hell is Todoroki doing out like this?

Izuku dismisses his curiosity and swings in, causing the mugger to faceplant. He stands on his back and pries the wallet from his fingers. Then he steps off and lets him scrabble to his feet and flee. He tosses the wallet back to its rightful owner, who's just… sitting on the ground, staring at the cement. It lands in his lap.

"I was starting to think you were just a delinquent," Izuku hurts himself saying. Todoroki's a hero student. Hell, Izuku's a hero student. Todoroki doesn't know that he knows this and he can't know why and why do either of them even bother coming to places like this?

He's about to say something stupid, like, 'Hey, how's your school year so far?' when Todoroki looks up and meets Izuku's eyes even though they're obscured by their goggles. He looks so tired and so, so relieved to see him. Izuku is too. He's happy that he gets to see his best friend as he knows him, but he's too tired. He's too tired. That look, though – it makes him feel like he's going to break down and cry right here.

He shoots webs onto the underside of a fire escape, high up, and swings himself so he's entirely held up by it and upside down. If his silk finally breaks, and he falls on his head, he'll probably thank it. He's still right where he was before, but upside down and showing off, now. From this different angle, he can't decipher all the emotions in Todoroki's face anymore; just the sheer openness he hasn't seen once in class that they all reside in, if he had the strength to flip right back around and look.

He feels like this openness is a gift, but a gift to be repaid.

So he does a stupid thing.

He pulls his red ski mask up over his nose to bare the bottom half of his face to Todoroki, and smiles.

He hopes to all hell that Todoroki doesn't recognize him. They haven't spoken in class or really been close to each other at all, much to Izuku's suffering, but maybe it'll pay off right here, right now. Todoroki stands up and puts his wallet back into his pocket, then limps across the alley to reach Izuku. He's concerned strongly by that limp. He didn't remember Todoroki being injured from the trip, and that mugger couldn't have hurt him like that. Could he have?

This is just like the rib.

"You okay, dude?" Izuku asks Todoroki, and it feels fresher and crisper to speak to him without his mask in the way. He wants to do this more often.

"Yeah. Bad day." He replies.

_No shit!_

Todoroki sighs. He's really close now. "I'm glad I get to see you," he says, and suddenly a hand's on Izuku's face. It's really warm. Very much like his cheeks. His mouth parts in minor shock that he's certain will explode later.

Izuku's goggles are tinted, but being this close with the tint has him seeing Todoroki's pretty eyes a lot easier than he can from across the room without them. One's brown, the other's blue, and he doesn't know which is which because he's upside down and all his blood is in his head because Todoroki's _right here._

Todoroki shifts forward on his tiptoes and kisses him.

The fact that his hands are caught on his own web is tragic. He wants to put one of his hands on Todoroki's face, too, and see how warm or cool it is. But this moment is quiet and perfect, so he relishes it.

Even though the kiss was closed-mouthed, it lingers on his lips when Todoroki pulls away. Izuku doesn't want him to. At least he can see his bright pink face from here. He's relatively sure his own is a deep scarlet in comparison.

Todoroki steps back. Izuku wants to chase him, but if he swings anywhere, he'll probably just bonk their heads and make them both feel bad. So he doesn't. Instead, he just makes a fool out of himself.

"I – you – okay – wow." He manages. "Wow." He wants to thank him, but he's pretty sure that's not how this goes.

"I'm sorry." Izuku feels like crying, because how can he do something so sweet and turn around and feel the need to apologize? "Will I be seeing you again?"

_Yes, please._

"Y-yeah?"

His stutter and confusion at why Todoroki would think that is terribly misinterpreted into indecision. His face falls. "Promise."

Izuku would usually backpedal and explain how sorry he was for acting vague and sounding mean, but this works too and looks like it'd be a little less painful for all parties involved.

So, despite his bone-deep weariness hiding somewhere in the back of his brain, he smiles his sincerest.

"I promise."


End file.
